flash fiction | Saying nothing in particular

One of my longtime blogging buddies, Hugh Roberts, is a master of flash fiction. Recently he issued a challenge to write a story in 101 words (no more or less) based on this picture.

Other guidelines are on Story Chat Digest (below). I don’t take part in too many challenges because I have enough trouble maintaining a regular blog and keeping the kitchen floor clean. But after yesterday’s long sojourn into troubled lives, I thought I owed you all a silly. Those of you still putting up with me that is!

Story Chat Digest: “Mastering the Art of Flash Fiction” by Hugh W. Roberts

So here, for Hugh, is my contribution.

Agnes Krispie

“You weren’t guaranteed a dead body!” Fred moaned. Every time the tour group returned to his bus they scoured the interior. They were easily the most rabid Christie fans he’d ever met.

“I think I found a clue!” Agnes Krispie shouted, causing the rest of the gang of eight to shuffle to the rear of the bus.

She held up the “clue” for all to see. “A fortune cookie!”

“Read the fortune!” The others cried.

“Please take your seats. This tour is over.”

“Oh no it’s not,” Agnes Krispie said, producing a pistol from her bag “This tour shall never end!

I was inspired by Bojana to attempt to write a bit of flash fiction. Here goes. Please let me know what you think … is it flash fiction?

We left Aragorn’s head with the Mennonites … At least that’s the last place I remember seeing it, resting on the driver’s seat of the Volvo, staring blankly at the neatly arranged tools hanging on the wall of the barn that served as the mechanic’s garage. The car had been bumped and bruised quite a bit in the rollover but its barely-held-together-by-rubber-bands (as we joked) engine was probably okay, saved by a sturdy bonnet, as the man said. And so “they” would take it in lieu of ambulance fees and I believe 500 dollars which would help us get home. But that was a matter between C’s parents and the Mennonites. I just grabbed what I could as they negotiated—my guitar for sure and some clothes (those not splashed by gasoline.) C grabbed her Martin and the shift knob, which had been carved of Swedish birch, and we said a tearful goodbye to Frodo. We hated to leave him, our trusty steed, but C was four months pregnant and so we had to return to Reno from the cornfields of Indiana. I’m sure she kept the shift knob with her in a sacred place which, after that trip, she never shared with me.